LatinNews Daily - 09 April 2018

Bolivia: On 3 April, Bolivia’s former president Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada (1993-1997, 2002-2003), and his former defence minister, José Carlos Sánchez Berzaín (2003), were found guilty of extrajudicial killings in a US court. The US federal court ruled that Sánchez de Lozada and Sánchez Berzaín were responsible for deploying military troops and authorising the use of force against civilians in Bolivia’s so-called ‘gas war’ of October 2003 that left over 50 dead and hundreds injured. The eight plaintiffs, all family members of victims, filed the case in 2007 and won US$10m in compensation after a ten-year legal battle. This is the first time that a former head of state has faced his accusers in a US human rights trial. Bolivia convicted other Sánchez de Lozada government officials for their involvement in the incidents in 2011, but Sánchez de Lozada and Sánchez Berzaín fled to the US in 2003 and could not be tried in absentia. Bolivia has now requested extradition of the two defendants to try them at home. Bolivia’s minister of the presidency, Alfredo Rada, called the US ruling a great step forward, but just the beginning in the process of justice for the victims of the gas war.

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